I dislike 95% of fiction. Help me rectify this. (Very detailed post!)

[Fishpond]

95% of my reading material is interesting non-fiction, particularly social criticisms / pop psychology type stuff and parenting books of course (gag). Apologies for the massive post, but felt I needed to give a definitive list of my "type" of books and either confirm or deny most of the hotly debated books I've seen in this topic.

For the last 2-3 years, I start a novel and 20 pages later just am disgusted with my inability to enjoy the book and chuck it away. I spend hours and hours combing the non-fiction section of the library and have picked over probably every subject. I really want to be able to get lost in a great story, with great writing, great characters, but they seem much more difficult to find. I continue re-reading the books I love but have literally not found a new novel to enjoy in at least 2 years.

Books I have read and enjoyed...
To Kill a Mockingbird
1984 & Down and Out in Paris And London (did NOT like Animal Farm)
Wuthering Heights
Pride and Prejudice and other Austen was okayyyyy
Most Philippa Gregory stuff
The Da Vinci Code and the rest of Mr. Brown (I know, I know...)
Pillars of the Earth & World Without End
HP & LOTR series
George R.R. Martin books (Song of Ice and Fire series)
The Doomsday Book
About 50% of Nick Hornby
Seven Types of Ambiguity
Most Barbara Kingsolver stuff
Maybe 25% of Hemingway
East of Eden, Grapes of Wrath, Of Mice and Men
Maybe 50% of Faulkner
Almost everything by Poe

Books I have tried to read or have read completely through and definitely did NOT enjoy...
Wolf Hall
The Help
Anything by James Patterson, Jodi Picoult, Stephen King, Salman Rushdie, John Grisham, Kate Mosse, Annie Proulx, Kurt Vonnegut, Virginia Woolf, Margaret Atwood
One Day (wasn't a HATED book, but "meh")
Anything "chick lit" - Sophie Kinsella et. al
Girl With the Dragon Tattoo
White Tiger
Catch-22
Catcher in the Rye
Life of Pi
Most "classics" - 98% of Dickens and anything pre-1900 really
Any type of mystery, I abhor the genre
Any type of romance, ditto
Room
Time Traveler's Wife
Captain Correlli's Mandolin
The Great Gatsby
Twilight

Any help? Or am I doomed to the annals of the first floor library only forevermore?

Going armed with list to the library today in hopes that most of these will be there.

Shall report back, possibly with a fee for the brilliant personal suggestions I've received

Might you like Edith Wharton? Just after the 1900 cut off point and quite bleak and modern in tone. The House of Mirth is my favourite as it's the most miserable, but The Buccaneers is also brilliant. It's like a backstage pass to all those will-I-ever-win-a-husband romances, revealing exactly how the not-so-innocent girls go about it. It was unfinished, though, and the added on endings tend to be a bit, well, happy for Edith Wharton.

If you are a history fan, I recommend She-Wolves by Helen Castor. It's non-fiction but character-driven and has a narrative structure. It focuses on four queens pre-Elizabeth I.

Bernard Cornwall wrote the books that the series 'Sharpe' was based on.

It charts Sharpe's progress in the British Army during the Napoleonic Wars. He begins in Sharpe's Tiger as a Private in the 33rd Regiment of foot, who becomes a Sergeant by the end of the book, and an Ensign in the 74th Regiment who is transferred to the newly formed 95th Rifles as a Second-Lieutenant during Sharpe's Trafalgar. He is gradually promoted through the ranks, finally becoming a Lieutenant Colonel in Sharpe's Waterloo.

I have watched the series so many times, but it is always riveting.

It has politics (Sharpe is an officer by promotion rather than breeding), history and drama. Espionage, bravery...the list goes on. A really great insight into life as it was then, both from the view of Sharpe and the people around him.

First few I've gotten today:

The Corrections - Franzen
Dissolution - Sansom
A Thousand Acres - Smiley

Will report back to see if you all have futures as personal literary consultants ;)

I liked 1000 Acres. Dissolution was good, certainly the historical aspect was interesting and well done.

Have you tried a memoirs of Hadrian by Margerite Yourcenar? (Or are you the wondrous MNer who recommended it to me?!) It is a fantastic book. The prose slips down like honeyed cream and you think you've been reading for no time at all but an hour's gone by....

Ooh I read a really good one about Vlad the Impaler too, which you might like. If you're interested I'll try and find out the title in the dusty alcoves of my mind (or Google!).

Have you read Colm Toibin Brooklyn

Colm Toibin
Writes Like
A Dream